Dengue fever in a
changing world
Professor Ooi Eng Eong, Professor in the Program in Emerging Infectious Diseases,
Duke-NUS Medical School
In an era where the convergence
of climate shifts and health crises
presents a formidable challenge,
a steadfast resolve to tackle
diseases like dengue fever takes
center stage. We sit at the foot
of a genuinely global challenge.
Today, Brazil has the largest
number of dengue cases globally
i
,
Bangladesh has reported a large
dengue outbreak, the disease is
endemic to 34 African countries
ii
.
In Southern Europe, much of the
summer months are now spent
on high alert for dengue.
iii
Challenges within dengue do not
exist in a vacuum, as marked by
the first dedicated health day at
a COP summit which took place
in Dubai in December 2023, the
relationship between climate
change and human health can
no longer be ignored. The impact
of climate change on human
health is a now problem, not a
theoretical future problem. Health
is the human face of climate
change.
Globalization has fueled the
spread of dengue, bringing both
Aedes aegypti and dengue viruses
into new environments, and
expanded urbanization (planned
and unplanned) has created
suitable habitats for Aedes aegypti
and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes.
This has created a need to
communicate the risk that
urbanization and city expansion
causes in relation to dengue and
other vector-borne diseases.
Climate change is already
changing the dengue landscape.
Rising temperatures and changing
rainfall patterns have allowed
Aedes mosquitoes to thrive in
new places including Europe
and North America where health
systems have little experience with
this disease. Patterns of dengue
virus transmission have also
changed in intensity and now
persist for longer periods each
year in dengue endemic regions.
As climate change continues to
transform cities around the world,
coastal cities may need to expand
inland as sea levels rise. New cities
will be built, and more people will
be forced to migrate away from
places that are uninhabitable
in the future. The geographic
footprint of dengue will thus
expand, putting even more people
at risk of preventable disease and
adding further pressure to fragile
health systems.
The first Global Dengue Forum
meeting which took place in
December at the sideline of
COP28 in Dubai, was timely
and captured the urgency of the
moment. It was intentionally
cross-disciplinary; enabling
rarely convened discussions
between scientists, economists,
city planners and engineers,
on how conventional and new
disease control strategies can be
integrated into dengue prevention
programs and health policies.
Finally, it was a call to action; the
world needs to act collectively
and act now on innovative
interventions that are integrated
in current health systems. If not,
the expansion of dengue into
new places and affecting new
populations will be inevitable.
Credit, Freuds
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